As promised, here are some photos of the interior that I took hours before all our junk arrived. Appologies for the not-so-glamorous photos; these were intended as "documentation" photos for our move-in inspection (always always document EVERYTHING. CYA, cover your ass!).
So the house was built in the 40's, which I guess is when people really hated windows and natural light. Keep that in mind on our tour, since a lot of this is pretty poorly-lit
Here we go!
The living room and biggest window in the house. It's very yellow so that will be changing. Those dark curtains have already come down and I'm hoping to remove/replace/paint those dark blinds white to reflect more light.
I've got some cool plans for this wall! I'll be painting the backs of the built-in bookcases some bright color and (if they let me) those bricks.
View of the dining room. More yellow! Sconces will probably come down and the hanging light replaced with something awesome. Hey, check out those fantastic ceiling beams!
The kitchen was a big selling point. It looks very swank, but we've discovered that the dark wood cabinets are light killers! We'll be installing under-cabinet lighting so we can actually see what we're doing when we cook. We've already nabbed an EPIC kitchen island this last weekend which I will be showing you very soon!
Another view of the kitchen. Dark blinds = already gone. That door leads out to the laundry "room". You'll see what I mean.
Woahhhh laundry "room" indeed! For all it's ghetto-fabness, I actually really like this space. It's really bright and it acts as a semi-outdoor storage area so I don't feel bad about putting things like recycling, trash or Teako's pee pad out here. On the tour, the owners said something to the effe
ct of "you should've seen it before we did this!".....yikes.
Speaking of yikes, check out our bathroom! Is that pink? Yes, yes it is. Lots of pink. This is the original tile from the 40s. I guess I can appreciate that the previous owners embraced it by painting the walls to match, but at the very least, we'll be saying "bye-bye" to the pink paint. We'd like to do a whole reno with new tile, but old house = lead paint. We're not sure that's something we want to tackle in a rental. You wouldn't know it from the picture, but this room is tiny too. Basically it's my least favorite room in the house because I'm supposed to spend a lot of time in here, but later you'll see how I plan to fix that.
This is the 2nd smallest room in the house: the 3rd bedroom slash office. We're using it as an office. Correction: boyfriend is using it as a little mancave office. Not sure how we feel about the green paint, but we don't hate it. Let's just say there are no decoration plans whatsoever at the moment. Except to get rid of those curtains.
Next up we have the master bedroom. Very roomy, but very dark. We're hoping to get a king bed to put in here as well as some awesome chandelier right plop in the center. For now, it's storing all of our unpacked boxes. I plan to have a "beautification station" in this room and the guest bedroom where people can primp and preen to their heart's content without having to occupy the tiny bathroom.
The guest bedroom is where we currently sleep since that's where the bed was going to end up once we got a king for the master. It's a cozy little room with nice windows (good bye, dark blinds) and a closet with a built-in shoe rack. We'll be painting it something a little brighter to reflect more light.
The owners left these paper lanterns behind, and we kinda like them.
Now for the big selling points. The yards!
We love sitting out in the backyard and just chillin'. There's a lot of potential here as far as landscaping and gardening are concerned. I don't have a picture of it, but the view from the upper terrace looks over the house and on to the gorgeous hills.
The owners left us their BBQ grill and we definitely plan to put it through its paces for our housewarming party.
The front yard is actually larger than the back yard by at least 3-4 times. We just added that fence this last weekend and will be finishing it up soon. Why a fence? Look at all that grass/fetch turf! Totally unusable without a fence since Teako would probably run out into the street in a blink. Once we get the fence secured, not only can we chill out here and play fetch with her, but we can also invite her friends over for play dates in our mini "dog park" :)
That concludes the house tour! We love having more space, a yard, friendly neighbors, sunlight and--perhaps most of all--peace and quiet! Stay tuned because we've got a lot of projects planned for this little abode.
COMING SOON: fence-building, epic islands and DIY composters.
